


let's go and throw all the songs we know into the sea

by Asuka Kureru (Askerian)



Series: Bleach daemon AU [7]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Cannibalism, Depowered Kurosaki Ichigo, First Dates, Grimmjow does eat hollows, M/M, Mild Gore, POV Outsider, not a dark fic at all but, one of the POVs is a hollow, yup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 03:08:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19803481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askerian/pseuds/Asuka%20Kureru
Summary: It's a Sunday morning and Blue steps into the train car, but he isn't alone.Two panthers slink in shoulder to shoulder. One of them sprawls out in her accustomed spot; the other, taller one sits prim and proper beside her, and snorts. "You know you're not supposed to block half the aisle, right?"The shorter one curls up her lip to flash fangs. "I'm not? Well, fuck then, I've been doing it all wrong." She stretches her legs out a couple inches further."Sometimes I'd almost think you were raised by wild beasts."The orange-haired man snorts, lips curved up just a bit at the corners, and he sits besides Blue with his elbow sticking out for a solid nudge. Blue sneers, and dang if it doesn't feel like he should flash fangs too. "Don't you start in on me, Kurosaki. I'll chuck you out on the rails, see if I don't."Both apparently-Kurosakis laugh, low and unexpectedly politely quiet. Gorō notes the name in a corner of his mind by pure professional habit."Of course I was raised by wild beasts," Blue finishes, entirely deadpan. Both Kurosakis snort. "Iama wild beast."--Four outside POVs on Grimmjow and Ichigo's totally romantic first date. Daemon AU.





	let's go and throw all the songs we know into the sea

**Author's Note:**

> This will make zero sense at ALL if you haven't read the rest of the AU, fair warning. u__u; 
> 
> Follows Moustache Allegy. Title from The Cure's "The lovecats".
> 
> (btw general heads up, i got a job recently so my answer-my-comments time has gone wayyyy down. i'll try to get to everyone but i was already kinda not very regular at it to start with. >_>;;;;)

The train car dedicated to bigger daemons has its regulars. 

It's been, what, two months, three months, since the first time Gorō and Hanako watched a young man with sky-blue hair slowly move inside the car, casing it the way some of his regulars at the station case a particularly tempting seedy bar with the easily accessible cash register and the volatile, not quite above-board customers.

Then they'd watched a black panther slink in after him, faint disgust in the way she placed her paws, cold hunger in her roaming eyes. 

That day Gorō had smiled a polite, mildly challenging smile and Hanako had shifted back pointedly to make space, long bare tail beating, but only once.

Bigger daemons are all those that don't fit on their human's lap or under their legs. Hanako is a Great Dane. _He_ could fit under _her_ legs.

The panther isn't as tall at the shoulder as she is, but longer, more muscled. Gorō and Hanako hadn't wanted trouble -- especially not for the passengers and their sheep, their dairy goats, their shetland ponies, and they knew the best way to avoid it was to make it know that _they_ were trouble, if anyone came looking.

Blue had snorted under his breath and then sat in the row facing him, only one seat to the side, legs stretched out but heels planted solid; panther sprawled in the aisle facing Hanako one shade off openly challenging. 

They've become regulars in the last few months, though they never get on or off at the same station. They keep sitting in the very middle of the car, no matter if Gorō and Hanako are already there or not. Gorō's been having an interesting time trying to map their roaming area. He has their home base pegged as Naruki City, or maybe Karakura, but they range wide.

Anyway the point is, he likes to people-watch, and he likes to try to guess things about people, and so far he is not guessing great things. The man has never bothered a passenger save by existing around them but he is trouble from the end of his daemon's tail to the tips of his hair. Dyed hair can be tolerated -- barely -- in teenagers, but this man is in his twenties. What kind of respectable job would accept it?

It's a Sunday morning and Blue steps into the car, but he isn't alone.

Orange-dyed hair, loose gait, watchful eyes but relaxed shoulders, very fit, only half a hand shorter or thereabout. Blue's a tall one, so that's still not dainty, but Orange is built more Japanese, not half-whatever heavier stock Blue must be coming from based on those cheekbones -- or based on the matching blue eyes. 

... And then Hanako's ears twitch, and he looks at the door again in time to see two panthers slink in shoulder to shoulder. One of them sprawls out in her accustomed spot; the other, taller one sits prim and proper beside her, and snorts. "You know you're not supposed to block half the aisle, right?"

The shorter one curls up her lip to flash fangs. "I'm not? Well, fuck then, I've been doing it all wrong." She stretches her legs out a couple inches further.

"Sometimes I'd almost think you were raised by wild beasts."

The orange-haired man snorts, lips curved up just a bit at the corners, and he sits besides Blue with his elbow sticking out for a solid nudge. Blue sneers, upper lip curling up with more tired annoyance than active hostility, and dang if it doesn't feel like he should flash fangs too. "Don't you start in on me, Kurosaki. I'll chuck you out on the rails, see if I don't."

Both apparently-Kurosakis laugh, low and unexpectedly politely quiet. Gorō notes the name in a corner of his mind by pure professional habit.

"Of course I was raised by wild beasts," Blue finishes, entirely deadpan. Both Kurosakis snort. "I _am_ a wild beast."

The Kurosakis turn to stare with pointed pity, though their eyes are light, dancing with laughter. Gorō tries not to look like he's paying attention, but this is fascinating. This wry, self-directed sarcasm is not something he expected. Not from such a confrontational, fringe-looking man.

" _Buddy_ ," the human Kurosaki says with heavy incredulity. "You have a _favorite seat on the train_. You have a favorite _train_ , you have a _commute_. I'm still feeling cheated I don't get to see you in salaryman duds after all. You have _literally never been less wild_ in your _lives_."

"I can get a briefcase and beat you to death with it," Blue growls, sinking just barely into his seat.

Gorō spares half a second considering the threat seriously -- it certainly sounded it. But...

Orange shakes his head sadly. At their feet one panther is grooming the other's ear clean with cheerful stubbornness. The panther being washed looks as enthused about that as a toddler would. And Gorō is a parent and a grandfather twice; he knows toddler sulks. 

"A _favorite seat_. I rest my case."

The panther being washed rears up and slaps the other one upside the head with a heavy paw; the other one leans back into the blow, slaps back, toppling the two of them into their humans' legs. Everyone in the car tenses up, pulling sheep and a lone deer farther away. Goro's Hanako sits up straight enough to loom, ready to wade in.

But it stops there, with the orange-haired one laughing easily, shaking his head as he looks around at the other passengers. "Sorry, sorry. Let's not bother your _fellow commuters_ , Grim."

Kurosaki-the-human elbows Blue (Grim...? Oh, is that English? Doesn't it mean something like gloomy, or sour? Kind of like _brooding_? Gorō chews on the inside of his cheek to keep himself from laughing. What an apt nickname that he never expected anyone to apply to the man to his face.) 

"You realize the longer you shoot your mouth off and the longer your beating will be, right."

"Oh nooo, _please_ don't beat me up," the other boy drones, eyes sparkling even through the deadpan of his tone and face. "That is a terrifying threat. I am terrified."

Blue crosses his arms with a huff and goes loose in his seat, head rolling back to stare powerlessly at the ceiling. "... Some days I miss when you were still scared of me."

"That lasted, what, two days?"

Human Kurosaki smirks at Blue's quick glare, but settles down without keeping on pressing the point; eventually Blue relaxes with a sigh, too.

They fall into a comfortable quiet as the train reaches its cruising speed, elbows barely brushing and daemons on the floor lying along the benches like bookends, curled on opposite flanks so that their shoulders touch. A couple of minutes later Blue raises his hand to point out a bit of architecture whizzing by, murmuring quietly enough that Gorō can't hear the words. Orange nods, watching where he's pointed with sober interest, a faint smile ghosting across his face.

Gorō rests his hand on Hanako's raised head, gives her a pet, eyes lowered like he's not still watching them, and reassessing.

A thug, certainly -- in his past. But the whole commute discussion was... Both a joke, and not. And it's clear Kurosaki thinks being scared of Blue after getting to know him is laughable. Blue has changed recently -- straightened out. His friend is teasing him, but like he's kind of proud, too. Supportive. His eyes are too sincerely soft for thoughtless banter.

Thirty years in the police and sometimes humans still surprise him. It's rarer when they surprise him in good ways, but that only makes it more precious. He smiles down at his daemon, thinking how much it must have helped Blue _know_ he wasn't doomed to an unlawful life to see a young man with the same daemon... skate with respectability, too -- this is probably inevitable with such uncommon, noticeable beasts for souls -- but still respect the bounds of society, still find a place in it. Oh, the Kurosakis have youthful misdemeanors in their ledger, he's sure, but he's also sure that it's nothing more than that.

Blue _has_ done worse than that. Gorō knows. He has no reason to think so, but he knows. But maybe the man has gone straight. Maybe he won't again. It's a nice story.

He keeps looking for holes to poke into his deduction anyway by reflex but one hour later when they walk out to switch trains they're still walking companionably side by side. Blue is saying something about "some weirdass old shrine broad" who'd whacked him with a tree branch then asked him for money to drive the evil spirits out of his cursed eyebrows; both Kurosakis are positively suffocating trying not to laugh loud enough to alarm the whole station.

"We'll never know how that shrine story ended now," Hanako bemoans, tail wagging against his foot.

"Probably not in murder," Gorō retorts through a smile. Blue looked too thwarted.

Real friendships are so _good_ to watch. So inspiring.

... He really can't help but wonder what the hell Blue's job even is, though.

Kurosaki is probably still in school. First year of university at best. But if they ever run into each other again Gorō _has_ to see if he can't get a chance to mention troubled teens mentoring somehow. He thinks the kid would do pretty good at it.

\--

"I still say we should call it 'Humans of Aibiki Beach.'"

"And I still say that's plagiarism on that New York blog."

"It's not plagiarism if we call it a reference!" 

Ugh. Why is it such a catchy title. Miki can't come up with anything else. Sora isn't helping with his careless 'let's own the lazy shortcut, it's making us look cool' attitude. Miki wishes she could embrace it -- her own daemon wouldn't love it so much if it wasn't in her -- but they've been reprimanded enough about not putting in the proper effort and being too relaxed.

She checks her camera once again, scroll past previous pictures. They've taken some pretty decent shots here -- the sea wind is just strong enough to tousle hair and feathers artistically and the sand is so nicely pale under a winter sun, the waterline mostly clean of debris. It's a good beach, for how close it is to Tōkyō proper. 

Perched on her shoulder guard, Sora suddenly squeezes his claws, gives a low whistle.

"Holy shit, let's call it Daemons of Aibiki Beach and put those two front and center."

Miki looks up. 

Hooooly _jackpot_.

"University guys," Sora reports, beating his wings briefly as he settles his weight and tilts his head. 

"Clothes? Hairdos?" 

"Check."

Fashionable. Awesome. And from here even her weak human eyes can tell they have good bodies. "Interesting faces?" 

" _Super_ check. You've got a Cute Boy Next Door _and_ a Hello Cheekbones."

Usually she goes for _interesting_ faces over blandly acceptable ones, she wants her pictures to show _character_ , but when she gets both interesting and hot? Woohoo.

And. 

Yeah.

The _daemons,_ holy shit. If she doesn't get to photograph them she will _die_.

Over the pale sand and steely-blue waves they look like two black holes in the shape of cats. They're fighting along the shoreline, splashing through the lazy surf. She zooms in and sneakily snaps three pictures before she has even asked for permission. At worst she can always delete them. Then she moves closer to meet the two, smiling hopefully, as Sora takes off from her shoulder to swoop over the cats. She watches from the corner of her eye as he gooses one of them on the rump and almost gets swatted.

"Whoops, sorry about that! Hey, sorry to disturb you guys, I'm making a photo article on the beach, could I pretty _pretty_ please take a couple photos?" 

She beams, looking hopeful and too endearing to reject (she hopes.) One of the two panthers lopes back to her human immediately, to stand before the two of them with her gaze wary; the second one sighs and looks up at a spiraling Sora, flicking her ears, and follows at a slower pace. The guys have stopped walking, too, so she slows down and then stops, bouncing a little on her toes. She doesn't wanna encroach on the panther's space.

Miki is... not sure which of the guys she goes with. The way she's placed kinda covers them both. And the stares she gets cool her a little bit, but she's never let a little reluctance stop her from doing her job. Japanese people are _really_ self-effacing and she has long since learned that if she wants to take pictures of anyone she's got to push a bit. 

"I'm Miki, that's Sora, can I ask about you guys?"

The orange-haired one winces. The blue-haired one with the cheekbones just stares, wordless. He's pretty intimidating. She wonders if he practices the stare-down in a mirror; it makes her grin. He arches a weirdly short eyebrow and she has to bite her cheek not to grin harder.

Sora is a merlin -- the smallest eurasian falcon, but they've been known to go after cows, cars, _trains_... Sora and Miki don't really _do_ intimidated. (They _do_ do 'routinely getting in deeper shit than they were ready for because they have _no friggin' sense of their relative sizes_ ', but this is taking pictures of hot guys on a beach. What can go wrong?)

"Um, listen, I'm not super into showing up on people's blogs--"

"Oh! Sorry for the misunderstanding, it's not a blog, we're reporters for Rinirinya, it's a bimonthly magazine." She digs out a business card, offers it two-handed with a proper bow and now he feels obligated to move closer and bow over his panther's back to take it from her, which, _hah_. "You guys have great style! I just want to snap a couple shots, maybe ask enough for a pithy one-liner or a little fun story underneath, it's nothing very involved--"

The other, bigger panther has stopped next to the taller guy's hip. Sora lands on Miki's padded shoulder and wriggles a little, opens his beak to take it up--

" _Snap_ a couple _shots_ ," Cheekbones repeats slowly, throwing his friend a look from the corner of his eye.

"... _Pictures_ , Grimmjow. Listen, I'm sorry, I really hate having my picture taken--" 

"Oh, you _hate_ it, huh?" apparently-Grimmjow (what kind of name is that? German? God, she's already forgotten how to pronounce it) drawls back, and then looks back at her, head slightly tilted. "What do you do with those pictures?"

... She should. Play it safe. She really should.

She's not sure a guy with a panther would _appreciate_ playing it safe.

"I paper my bedroom ceiling with them so I can have sweet dreams," she shoots back, entirely deadpan, and then cracks a grin as he snorts. "No, it's entirely professional, no worries. I'm doing an article on the variety of people who come here, it's mostly a fluff piece but people like those, it drives up traffic."

"I understood maybe half of what you said there at the end," Cheekbones replies, hands in pockets but obligingly leaning closer to look at the camera screen she's showing him. 

"He's foreign," Cute Neighbor adds quickly, massaging the bridge of his nose. "Internet stuff, Grimmjow. She wants to show us off to the masses."

His panther is still watching Miki and Sora warily as she blocks the way to the guys; the bigger one mostly seems amused, a few inches off leaning casually on Cheekbones' thigh.

"We _are_ very photogenic," the bigger panther agrees, almost like she's commiserating. 

" _Ugh_."

"So can I?" Miki asks. "I promise I'm good at it. I'll send you copies, you guys can have professional-grade photos to commemorate this... random Sunday on the beach?"

Of all things, she didn't expect that to be the thing that makes Cute Neighbor deflate. 

"... Yeah, it's..."

"You wanna do it?" the smaller panther asks, tail tip flicking a little, but her shoulders relax.

"Who _wouldn't_ want to paper their ceiling with your face," the bigger one drawls teasingly, and the first one turns her head to give her a _look_ over her shoulder.

" _Damn_ straight, nobody," she agrees with surprising humor considering how dour her soulmate is, and then sits, tail curling around her paws. "So how the fuck does this go?"

Cute Neighbor splutters. "Hey, I didn't say yes--"

Cheekbones gives him a heavy-lidded, canines-baring smirk. "Chickening out?" 

"I just don't need my classmates to find it!"

"We can use fake names!" Sora interrupts cheerily. "We usually do anyway, or nicknames. And we can take the two of you from the back or, like, from the nose down if you really don't want to have your whole face out there, it's cool, it's great." 

"We're just gonna walk around you and snap a few candid pics as we talk, and then decide if we want to stage anything? It should only take ten minutes at most."

By the time Neighbor heaves out a sigh of agreement she's already moving, snapping away. The poor guy is tense as hell, but she gets some pretty great shots of the two panthers peering around his friend's stonewashed jeans legs as they follow her. Cheekbones' pants are molded to serious athlete thighs, and... actually she shouldn't get his ass in the next picture, or not too much of it, or her editor will pull it on account of they're not a gay softcore website. Daaaang, that rump.

Neighbor's clothes are still close to his body but a _little_ less painted on, more like he bought them that way instead of shrinking them in the wash or borrowing them off a roommate. Better structure on his outfit, more layers -- pretty stylish, actually.

"Do you guys go to university together?" she asks casually as she goes.

"I'm actually still in high school," Neighbor replies blandly.

"... Okay, maybe we don't mention that." She's not sure if she would need to get parental permission first. She's gonna pretend it never came up. "How did you meet, then?"

All four of them exchange looks.

"My friends were dancing with his friends," Neighbor replies dry as a desert. Cheekbones grins back, all teeth. "Then we got to find out he had grabby hands. I kind of objected, and then he objected me objecting. Then the adults broke up the party."

Miki blinks and then laughs. "Grabby hands, huh?"

Cheekbones smiles back, mocking and smug. "She looked like a snack, what can I say. " Miki is not very surprised when Neighbor punches him in the shoulder. 

"From romantic rivals to best friends, then?"

"... Almost exactly that except all the words are in the wrong order," one of the panthers mutters, but when she tries to prompt for more they all roll their eyes. In-joke? Heh, okay, she can take a hint; she moves on.

(Friendly rivalry to best romance? No, that makes no sense. _Best_ rivalry...? Pfff.)

The thing takes closer to twenty minutes than ten in the end, but in the middle both Cheekbones and Neighbor's daemon have loosened into it, looking like in the course of humoring her and fucking with their friends they started having fun for real. They tease Neighbor into the ground; then she gets to snap a picture of a perfect judo throw, two black cats rolling their golden eyes in unison.

"Okay, a last one for the road? Facing the sea -- you guys can turn your backs if you want, and the girls can look at me -- or at each other, that works."

Cheekbones isn't turning entirely away and neither is Neighbor's smaller daemon, both with their heads craned to look over their shoulders at the other one. It's a really neat kind of echo, not quite a symmetry. Behind them are the waves and the horizon. A _super_ good shot. Maybe even too good to be with the borderline selfies she's been taking for the other interviewees. It's almost artsy.

"You guys could be on ads, I swear to God. You've got enough presence for a whole cartload of models. Gimme an email and I'll send you the pictures and the article once it's out!"

"Oh, come on," Neighbor grumbles, embarrassed, but turns around, shoulders loosening visibly, and starts rattling off his address. She hands over her camera to Cheekbones so he can look through the pics as she adds the email and a note to herself into her phone.

Around their legs the panthers have started circling and swiping again, lazily, almost more like a thoughtless habit. She loses track after twenty seconds.

"Entirely off the record and purely for our own curiosity but. Do... you... ever mix them up," Sora asks with morbid curiosity, raptor eyes wide and crest flicked up. "Like, at first glance and then whoops."

Neighbor gives a slow, _wooow_ blink. "Uh. _No_. We really don't."

"Yeah, we ain't the kind of cowards who need an excuse like 'oh, we mixed them up' in order to get a little soul-groping going on -- oof. Ooh, you little fucker."

Cheekbones lobbs the camera at her; she and Sora throw hands and a claw at the strap to catch it before it bounces off her chest and hits the sand. Then they look up still sputtering and Cheekbones is chasing Neighbor across the sand, moving lazy like he's not bothering to try very much and yet catching up really fast. The panthers are tackling the hell out of each other.

It's not long before Neighbor is eating sand, too. She watches them for a bit, laughing -- and there's a sudden high kick that reverses their positions and then they're roughhousing in the damp sand at the edge of the waves until one of them predictably gets splashed and jumps up with a splutter.

She's laughing until Sora stops.

"Hm?"

"--That was the shorter one," he says, a bit strangled, watching Cheekbones' hand gripping a hold on what they thought was Neighbor's daemon. 

They stand there dumbfounded for another minute as they reevaluate everything they've seen recently and then laugh, nervous and relieved.

"Wow, lucky we never said anything. I can't believe we mixed up who was who just because they're both big and black."

"Yeah." 

"And all into each other's space."

"Yeeeah."

"And one of them has a tufted tail."

"Yeah -- what?"

"... Seriously, Miki, you need to get some glasses."

\--

"--don't think you get it, a _journalist_ has _evidence_. I'm telling you we're _fucked_."

Low, dismissive laughter. "Hey, you know my policy on that shit."

Frustration. "Kill everybody who has something to say about it is not actually a viable anti-rumor strategy!"

Mocking. "It is if you don't chicken out in the middle."

"Ugh, you're a dick. But seriously, it's gonna be bad."

Uncaring. "Uh huh?" 

"Let me illustrate. If I didn't think you'd end up sliced and diced on my old man's blade _I would be tempted to let you_."

"... Yeah, okay, we might be fucked."

Sure the beach isn't too far on foot but there's only a few kinds of people who venture farther than two buildings deep into the docks.

People who work here. Legal or not. (Jin and Rin, incidentally, do work here. Legally, even, though that's a front for their actual job and the company employing them only exists on paper. Got a paycheck and everything.)

People trying to find a corner to piss or fuck in peace; idiot kids looking for somewhere to smoke, shoot up, break stuff, steal stuff.

People who want to get rid of something.

(Like a body.)

(Pre-dead or not.)

Jin doesn't think those two have a body to dispose of right now. 

Rin thinks they don't have a body to dispose of _yet_.

They don't really think that because of the daemons. Big and flashy despite being supposedly geared toward stealth, that's a minus point for low-ranked grunts, and they're both on the younger side. Predatory he guesses is good, but yakuza are kind of over the whole wolves and hyenas cliché. You need some finesse too. Some sneaky.

Big jungle cats don't have to mean non-civilian, in the end. The conversation Jin and Rin overheard could be hyperbole. They could be unaffiliated crooks, sportsmen caught doping up. Anything.

It's because of the way the one that wanders first through the containers stalks in, eyes roving. It's how he takes all of one entire second to notice Jin, even through his stillness and the shadows. How he takes him all in with a quick raked-down glance and then his eyes narrow -- and _then_ he smiles.

He's not a civilian, and with that much crazy in his teeth he's not a cop either. They never fake that part right.

Probably a hired gun, but not one that's been discaded yet. Competent, to offset the bloodlust. Definitely the kind of guy to get his hands really dirty. Wetworks.

The guy after him, now. Face pinched in worry or frustration. Air of distaste at the rust and unidentifiable slime puddles and unhurried rats. He doesn't fit.

"Aniki," the little punk they assigned him to learn the ropes breathes out behind him. "Is there trouble?"

Rin shifts around Jin's neck, coils a little more securely. She doesn't break eye contact with the panther either. (At this distance she can't see shit, but appearances are important and she triangulates okay with Jin's own eyes.) "Not yet. Mind your manners." 

"What family...?"

Jin shrugs one shoulder. "Dunno." The hitman is approaching, eyelids at a lazy half-mast, vaguely smiling like something is amusing him. Not worried in the least. That's... potentially not good. 

Jin has done hitman jobs, too. Before. 

He might just want to talk. Jin catalogues his weapons just in case.

And the outsider finally notices him in the shadowed room past the window and tenses up, daemon ruff puffing up...

... Like a civilian, but not _enough_. Wary but not scared.

"Hey there," the hitman says, mellow enough. The young man's daemon -- trots to catch up with his panther, like she's more interested in covering for them than in sticking nervously close to her own human. Huh.

That tail has a tuft at the end. 

Rin scents the air with her tongue to make sure, but they both already know. That's not a jaguar, that's a lion.

A lion, now, that's a boss daemon.

The boy was talking about his father's blade, wasn't he. Jin's eyes flick back to the hitman's, scanning him. Security for the boss' son? Showing him the ropes? Maybe he's supposed to be pretending at a normal life at university, and then he fucked up, and now he's asking for help covering it up. The hitman didn't talk to him with very much respect. Either he's not being groomed to take it up or the hitman is not as in control of his crazy as he seems and is gonna get himself a beating at some point.

"Hey," Jin says back, eventually, and moves into the doorway to his office, shifts his weight so his feet are a little more solidly planted. "You wanted something?"

But he doesn't get to hear an answer, because then the moronic little brother attached to him bursts out, "Holy shit, Kurosaki?!"

Then for a very long second or three Jin and Rin get to watch the hitman's face go completely empty of anything but "how best should I kill this thing".

Jin slaps his idiot over the head without looking back, sharp and punitive, and offers a look of bored commiseration to the hitman. He tries not to too obviously check on the boy behind him who... winces, vaguely unsurprised, and doesn't seem to recognize his moron in return even a little bit.

"Sorry, I don't remember you."

"Wha -- you -- Aniki, he used to beat us up three times a fuckin' week! You don't _remember_ me?" 

... Huh.

He really isn't dressed like a punk at all. Button-up shirt under a _cardigan_ , long coat, pretty tight pants. Where's the Adidas gear? Jin seriously pegged him as upper management material, the way he dresses. 

"I used to beat up a lot of people every single day of the week," supposedly-Kurosaki points out, in a bland, casual way that doesn't read even a little bit as bragging.

" _Used_ to," the hitman-bodyguard's daemon repeats in an undertone, teeth bared in amusement.

"Yeah, now we've got some assholes taking up all our free time in the name of sharpening our lame-ass instincts or whatever," the lioness replies with an unsubtle side-look. "Anyway, sorry, what was your name again?"

"Yamatora!" Jin's little brother shouts back with offended disbelief. "Yamatora and Queen!"

"Yamabuta! Right, yeah," Kurosaki lies, _offendingly_ badly, "it's coming back to me. Totally."

Jin's little brother (whose real name isn't even close to containing the word tora anywhere in it) seethes. 

"Hey, how's ... life. I see you got a job. Congrats?"

"Oh _fuck_ you. Fuck you, you were always so high and mighty like you were too good to be scouted but look at that, you finally met a family you couldn't say no to, huh?"

... He's a civilian? Then what -- huh. Jin's face stays unmoving as he thinks. What is it then? If he's so good as to beat on several people at once every day of the week, if he's being trained personally by a guy with a killer instinct Rin can feel shivering from ten meters off? Secret mistress' child being brought back in? Adoption?

Because he's gonna be a higher up. Hitman's standing in front, as is proper, and verbally he's loose as hell with Kurosaki, but he's still shutting the hell up and letting the kid lead the conversation now. Isn't he.

Kurosaki blinks slowly; his daemon's head rises, ears flicking, before she turns them both onto Jin's idiot little brother like satellite dishes.

"Nah," he replies eventually, slow like he's only just figured something out and is still trying to put it properly into words. "I think I saw a family I wanted to say yes to. I hope you did, too."

His eyes are oddly intense suddenly. Even more intense when he turns them on Jin himself, face entirely neutral save from the blazing force of his sudden, complete attention. 

It feels heavy. Like the air got thicker for a bit. The way it feels when Jin tries to see Rin's infrared spectrum with his own human eyes, that he knows is here through her without being able to find it on his own. He has only ever had this feeling in front of a few oyabun -- like they might choke you easy as they please and they won't even need their hands, they won't even need to stand up from their seat. 

It's not even a _killing_ intent, not yet. But it's so...

"--Uh. Wha?"

Tora has missed the meaning entirely, but Jin has not. Even if for a second he has to fight his own disbelief to accept it.

If Tora is not enjoying his own new family -- if he hasn't chosen them, if he was forced in, then Kurosaki is entirely willing to drag him away; he's only still deciding if that means he's got to go through Jin first.

... Yeah, boss material. Oh, Jin and Rin think, as she tightens around his throat in pure reflex. And if Tora is right and he really wasn't even raised yakuza then... 

He's got to tell his boss to make triple-sure to keep an eye on him. Because whatever family he went with, it's going to start moving upwards soonish. Couple years at best. But it's going to move.

That's not the kind of spirit any boss without a good heir is gonna pass up on.

But right now, he's just a newbie, and they're on Kishiume turf. They are being _really fucking rude_.

"Tora. The man asked you a question."

The newbie blinks in confusion, like Jin was supposed to be on his side no matter what. You can't treat an heir the same you treat another little street punk; he's gonna have to learn. He hesitates, daemon cowering in shock. "I uh. Yeah? They're cool. Really badass."

Suddenly Jin fels about fifty pounds lighter, especially around the lungs. Kurosaki rocks back onto his heels, shoulders loosening; his lioness sits and starts to scratch under her chin with a back paw. "Okay, cool."

Tora is still blinking dumbly. "Uh. Yeah. Cool."

"... You seriously know a guy like that?" the hitman's daemon asks the lioness, who clears her throat and blink mildly. 

"Oh man, I know a ton. Only reason you haven't met any is you scared them all off."

The panther starts licking at her front paw to groom, smugly pleased. The hitman rolls his crazy gaijin eyes. "Anyway, if you guys are done with your reunion. This is your turf, right?"

Jin narrows his eyes. Just because this doesn't sound like he's gonna try to drive them off doesn't mean he won't. "Yes."

"Great. What's the scariest fucking place around here?" 

That... was not something he expected to be asked. At all.

"Do you ever wake up in the morning and think 'hey, maybe I'll try _not_ to sound like a serial killer today'?"

"Kurosaki, that's _boring_. Scariest place?"

"What do you want it for?" he demands, because there's a time for hints and subtlety and legal deniability and there's a time for 'like hell we'll let you dump corpses in our backyard and frame us, what the fuck'.

"Sounds like a good date spot," the hitman replies, totally deadpan.

"Is that for your -- your photograph person?" Tora asks like a total fucking moron, oh hell, now they know for sure they were overheard-- 

Hitman snorts in amusement; Kurosaki gapes like a fish with zero respectability to speak of and then starts stammering."No! Wait. No. I mean. Oh fuck. No, it's... someone else? Haha. Ha." 

"Kurosaki, they don't care who, they just wanna make sure we don't litter on their turf. We're not gonna," Hitman says to Jin, but not in a way that says whether there won't be a corpse and it's just about scaring someone straight, or whether the corpse just won't be findable, tucked nice and deep under the farthest pier. "That'd be rude," he adds -- almost piously. 

Kurosaki chokes a little, and so does his daemon. "Oh yeah. Rude. That's something everyone here is very good at. Not being that. Yeah." 

Rin and Tora's daemon look at each other; then Tora's daemon pipes up. "Definitely the old crumbled hangar over there," he says. "Dark and rusted to shit and it smells really bad."

Jin can't help scowling. "No, it's the abandoned crane by Pier B." 

"Aniki, the crane is cool!" Tora protests. "And if it was gonna fall it would have already."

"It's always making noise in the wind."

"I've ... never heard that?"

"Are you _deaf_. It's the crane," he asserts, turning back to their guests. "No sightlines anywhere, lots of escape routes, you should feel safe and you just don't, and if you don't pay attention to the wind you don't even notice it's howling and moaning all the time."

... That... was certainly an opinion he had. On creepy things. 

He's a yakuza, he's not supposed to notice the unnerving things. He stares down the hitman, daring him to say anything about that, Rin's head rising over his shoulder in warning.

Hitman just nods. "Figured _you_ would know. Thanks, that's helpful. C'mon, Kurosaki, let's find that crane shit and spook you into port water."

He ambles away. Nodding to the both of them hurriedly, Kurosaki follows. The two cats spend another second watching Jin and his trainee and then follow at a casual jog. 

They must not know how easily sound resonates between metal containers and cement walls, because Jin hears them for a while after they've turned the corner. 

"You know how to say thanks, I'm amazed."

"I say thanks when people are actually being helpful."

"By leading you to their murder grounds?"

"Hey, it is helpful."

"That explains a _lot_. Just so we're clear, I don't actually want to killher, I just want the pictures not to show up in my father's hands, ever. Ever. "

"They won't if they're under the pier!"

" _No_."

\--

Arrowbone likes sitting at the very end of the crane's rusted arm, swinging her many legs in the wind. The wind brings in salt and pollution, decaying seaweed. Nice. 

Sometimes she wanders inland, follows the workers back to their homes and their cramped apartment buildings and their weary despair. Sometimes she's lucky and finds a recent ghost. She doesn't like to take risks, though. If there are people living then there are shinigami patrols. 

Also she's never really caught herself any ghost over there who matched the deliciousness of a terrified, beaten-into-a-pulpy-mess, freshly-drowned man.

Or woman, she's not picky that way.

Once there was a child. She can still taste the frantic shifting of his daemon down her throat as it desperately tried to find a shape that would allow it to fight free.

"... that it, then?"

"Looks like."

Two identical daemons wander out of concrete walls and containers, and she can't help it; she drools a little bit. Souls still in their flesh are a goddamn pain and often not worth the effort to extract them, but one of them feels... Yeah, one of them is a sensitive. Powerless on its own, but still open enough that when she touches it, it will know.

The other one is totally flat and boring. She'll see if it's worth enhancing the good one's flavor with some 'oh no, what's happening to you' first. She hops down from her perch, floats over the daemons. They're flank to flank and gazing around with identical vague boredom, though their tail tips twitch.

They're going to be delicious.

The humans are really dissimilar. One saunters like he owns the place and one keeps sneaking wary looks around. That'll be the one who can tell this isn't exactly an amusement park around here, then. Heee.

"Thank you so much for expanding my horizons to good places to dump bodies," the wary one says, disapproving. The other one snorts. 

"Guess it ain't all bad as those go. Space to move around if needed, but no straight lines for any escapee to pick up speed. Or be seen, I guess, if you mind that shit."

"You're so creepy sometimes."

"Mmm."

They're planning to dump bodies? Ooh. Maybe she should hold back, let them bring her takeout before she eats them too... 

She's hungry now, though. Not that hungry yet but there's no sense in waiting until the hunger makes her stupid and she wanders straight into Tōkyō.

"So that's the place then?" one of the panthers asks. The other one snorts, ears flicking, and lazily scans the length of the pier. 

She doesn't look up, of course. Arrowbone drifts closer, one of her many hands reaching to ruffle that black fur. It's hilarious to touch daemons. They can't tell she's here at all and they still know they've been encroached upon and they freak out for what they think is no reason. She has given people nervous breakdowns this way. 

"Yeah," her target says, eyelids at half-mast. "Picnic in, hmm... Two minutes."

Then she twists around and up on her hind paws, and she latches with teeth and clawed front paws onto Arrowbone's second leftmost hand. 

The wrist crunches in. Arrowbone screams. 

She rears back up, flails her hand by reflex; the panther clings, rabbit-kicks at her arms, and then lets go all at once. She falls several meters down and lands like she couldn't care less. 

The entirely powerless man is looking up straight at her, hands in pockets. He's smirking.

Arrowbone shrieks with every ounce of power she has and throws all her arms forward, showering the area in shrapnel.

"I felt that!" the sensitive yells out as he gets shoved out of the way and rolls. "I kinda felt that! A tiny little almost--"

The panther that bit her cannonballs into his knees and Arrowbone's swoop misses his head by two inches. Then she has to roll in the air to dodge the second panther, pouncing at her long trailing tail.

"What the fuck is it?!" the second panther yells when she lands, head and ears swiveling as she -- that fucker is as blind as her human, how did she know where to pounce?! "Shape, size, weapons, general stats _come the fuck on Leucchan!_ "

"The fuck did you call me?!" the first, bitey panther screeches, and whirls to slap her rump with a heavy paw. Arrowbone is positively choking on her outrage. 

"Don't _ignore_ me!" she yells, and sends another volley of bone spines down. 

"Maybe take your own advice," a male, raspy voice says almost in her ear. 

Then half her right arms are gone at the shoulder.

Arrowbone hits the crane, clings desperately to make sure she won't fall, scrabbles to slip between the protective cage of the girders. Her tail slithers to safety a second before the human lands feet first on a girder, catches another overhead to keep himself up, and grins down at her all teeth out. 

He's got a crowbar in his other hand.

It's not sharp. She doesn't understand how he managed to hit fast enough, hard enough to just shear through her plating and the muscles underneath. It's like he popped every shoulder out of joint and then cracked and tore it free, like crab legs. It hurts -- a red lancing pain that makes her howl again -- but he doesn't wince or stumble at the reiryoku-laced noise, he just laughs.

Then he hauls himself up one-handed, swings through a gap in the girders, and throws himself down at her feet first.

It's a long way down for ricocheting against metal bars all the way. 

She stays down at the bottom of the shaft for a little bit, winded and dazed. Through her mask she can see the panthers circling with their heads low and ready. She doesn't understand how the man -- he got her from _above_ , how -- and how he didn't strain his daemon bond, it was far enough for -- _how_.

"Holy shit, Grimmjow, are you stupid?! What if it tumbled around and landed on top of you! You can't even use sonído right now, can you?"

"Maybe I can," the man on top of her like a hunter on a dead rhino goes grumpily. Arrowbone stays still, pretending to still be dazed. Her mask... Her mask is too strong to be cracked by mundane metal. It is. She has to believe it is. 

... Wait. Sonído?

"Maybe if you could, I _wouldn't have been able to see you move_." The sensitive sighs through his nose. He's got some sign pole with the end dragging on the ground in hand, like he thinks he could do something with it -- but his friend got her with a crowbar. 

Not even a zanpakuto or a real human weapon. Just. A crowbar. What the _hell_ are they? How did -- ghost hunters who got lucky a couple times? But she's not a newborn hollow, she's been around fifteen fucking years and her arms are already growing back.

She rears without warning, throwing Crowbar against the girders; then she flows out along the ground like a millipede, snaking forward for the blind daemon. They'll see how much they can ignore her when she swallows down that bitch and dangles the human's empty corpse under his friend's _nose_ \--

"Up," the other panther goes, without moving a whisker, and Arrowbone misses entirely as the blind panther jumps vertical with all four legs.

She lands all claws out; Arrowbone screeches in fury, flips her off her back, feeling bloody furrows in her thick skin. It stings, but it's sure as hell not bad enough to --

Wham.

"Did I -- I think I got it? It feels like I got it," she hears, from somewhere far away. Oh. Dizzy. Her mask is... Not cracked. But her skull. God. 

Crowbar snorts. Footsteps, heels striking the ground with deliberate noise. "You got it."

A panther lands on her back, front paws between her shoulder blades. Snuffles against her skull. Arrowbone tries to move, but then there's a human foot pinning her tail down. Just one minute, one minute-

"So uh. I guess now you're gonna..."

"Yep."

"Remind me again why I need to be here to watch this?"

"Isn't it traditional or some shit?" A brief pause. "Got money from Kisuke. I'll watch you stuff ice cream down your maw later on."

Laughing, quiet and pleased. "It's kind of too cold for ice cream, but make it takoyaki and you've got a deal."

She blinks, and then she bristles up along her back like a slow wave, crackling with fury. "You're kidding me. You fuckers are on a _date_?"

She flips around, sending man stumbling back and panther hopping off to avoid her raking arms, twisting backwards to get at the furry little bitch -- and she grows spines and blades and everything sharp she has ever shaped out of every single place she possibly can. 

"I'm going to Cupid you straight through the face!" she yells, and launches herself and all her projectiles ahead at Crowbar. She's gonna tear his meat up to pieces, and she's gonna _yank his ghost out_ , and she's gonna--

She forgets the daemon.

She forgets the daemon, and as she flies overhead at top speed Crowbar's panther flips on her back and raises all four legs and lets Arrowbone slash her own underbelly open on her quadruple pawful of claws.

Arrowbone drags her along by sheer momentum; then she keens, tries to roll her off and the other panther is there, clinging to her back with duller claws and just-as-sharp teeth, and then -- pole spearing through her hip -- crowbar finding her mask, bright-sharp crack. Oh.

Oh, there's. Light. Flaking off. That seems a bit bad.

She hears crunching, wet noises but they're far away. She's mostly concerned with the motes of light sparkling gently in the air. It's so... So soothing. Pretty. 

"You want some?" Crowbar asks, and oh, huh, that's the end of her tail in his hand, isn't it, a good arm's length of it, flopping like a dead fish. It's not attached to her anymore.

It seems like it should hurt and she's sure it will in a minute. But she can't really... Huh.

"... somehow both the most romantic and the grossest offer ... made me yet."

Stop sign guy has a weird expression on his face and she thinks a minute ago she couldn't have read it (or wouldn't have cared.) But her mask is... Her mask is flaking off, and oh, nuances.

It's a wistful grimace, if those exist.

"... Might wake up if you feed him," Crowbar is saying with a quiet, unpracticed careful tone. Something awkward-quiet, a little cautious at the edges.

There's a brief pause, and then a negative head shake; a smile.

"Nah. I'm good."

Arrowbone watches as Crowbar raises her tail to his mouth and bites down with a heavy sigh. "You could try a bite."

"One, I'd throw up. Two, principles. Three, I'd throw up." 

"Ugh, fuck your principles."

"Four," the sensitive's panther says, leaning hard on Crowbar's panther to groom her face, "we can't even touch the hollow if it's not trying to touch us back so technically speaking the only thing he's gonna bite down on when you try to force-feed him will be your hand, Grimmjow, and you'll deserve it."

"What she said. Put that chunk down."

"Pfffff. You can't even see the chunk."

"I can see your hand! Also is it dead yet? Because if not can you kill it already, I'm starting to feel bad for it. Having to witness your gross cannibal feeder kink as it's dying, that's just adding insult to injury."

"I'm gonna stuff myself full and then throw it up right down your--"

"Oh my _god_ , turned off for life! No. Grimmjow, no. I'm serious, you're _never_ kissing me again--"

Who are these guys, she thinks vaguely as they bicker on top of her. One of them with zero presence she can feel, but he can see her. He can eat her. He's got a daemon. Like a living, whole and unbroken menos. A Vasto Lorde hidden in flesh.

One of them a basic human with barely a touch of awareness who knows all that about his boyfriend and still wants to make out -- because she's not stupid; they'll be kissing the second she's all gone, all devoured. He'll put his tongue between hollow-eating teeth and trust them, and like it.

Freaks in love.

She was in love with the guy who dragged her to the pier to make sure she stayed quiet, she remembers. She was Honda Yoko and her daemon was Kannosuke and they were a tattooed man's mistress and then his wife told him "she goes" and didn't even make it an ultimatum, didn't give any "or" -- and she went, right into the bay. They died still in love and they rose as an angry ghost in love still.

His daemon was Kumiko and she was delicious.

No regrets.

Some regrets, really, because fuck if she wanted to get eaten, and it really was fun to see freaked-out, despairing faces and she wanted to do it more. But then she slips, and she fuzzes. Blurs. Goes.

A vast crowd of quiet dreamers takes her in.

\--

"So I guess you're a dead, cannibal ghost who dates now."

"Don't be cocky now, Kurosaki. There's gonna need to be a repeat or three before we can say it's something I am and not something I tried once and it turns out it sucked."

"That your way of asking me out again?"

"Knew you weren't as dumb as you looked."

" _Hey_."


End file.
